nolangrady wrote: »

I am a newly minted CP 190 Templar healer. I've viewed a few of the guides on YouTube but many of them focus on tankier builds or have gear that I am hoping to attain in the next few months. I am running seducer and Magnus with destro and resto. I don't have warhorn yet but working on that. I do pretty welll on random dungeons but for some reason I feel like my heals never crit and my HoTs are weak. I use the mage mundus and with all the buff spells on my bars I don't have space for any modifiers like magelight. Any suggestions when you don't have the cure set yet or other fancy drops? What should I focus on first? Thanks fellow healers.

Gearwise it doesn't sound like a bad starter set.

You say your heals aren't critting. Try the Thief mundus instead of Mage. And of course run divines on your gear (if not already). And you'll see crits.

However.. do you need your heals to crit in the content you are doing? Are people dying on you? Which HoT's are you talking about? Cleansing Ritual isn't going to tick for much, but its not about the healing it does. The Resto staff HoT should be pretty decent. But even then HoT's aren't meant to fully heal, they just take some of the edge off.

One HoT I like to use, especially with alot of adds is the Purifying Light morph of backlash. Backlash itself can do some serious damage. But with the morph, it ends with a decent HoT. You put that on 6 enemies and 6 HoTs are running. Just watch your magicka with that.

One encounter I'll mention specifically because its the only one that stumped me at first. The Lich (I think 2nd to last boss) in Wayrest Sewers 2. He does a teleport and then a channeled attack that does a ton of group damage. I wasn't able to directly keep the group up by heal spamming. Guides say that the group needs to stack on healer and heal themselves as well.

Well that's great an all if everyone's a templar (yeah I know other classes can heal but not everyone takes heals when not the healer). But if you're the sole healer in the group, this fight can get interesting. I found a near foolproof way of doing it. Activate the Restoring Light ultimate Rite of Passage (I use the Practiced Incantation morph). As long as no one goes past 20m of you, they will not drop below 90%. The ult cost is low enough that it will be up by the time the next attack comes.

Other than that, its just keep buffs up, do whatever debuffs you like to do, and use Rushed Ceremony (I morphed it to Breath of Life) whenever someone starts dropping. Healing as a Templar has to be one of the easiest things I've played in this game. However.. you're not just a healer.

You've got a destro staff, Aedric Spear, and some other damaging stuff. Make sure to use them. I did a Imperial City Prison group the other day. Not a bad group, but not the most coordinated. Good enough to get to the last boss though. But it had issues. Not bad players, the DPS.. just ignorant and inexperienced. Lets just say I had to solo that freaking boss from 12% to dead as a healer. Group thought I was badass, OP, or whatever.. I was just done with the boss's crap lol.

Point here is be prepared to step up to a non-healing role when its called for. And when healing isn't needed, make the run a little quicker by helping with the damage a bit. You chose a destro staff for a reason. Maybe a guide said it would be a good idea, well whatever the reason, you've got on, use it.

And the best advice. Be patient with your groups. Not all struggling players are bad. Some are learning. Cherish the ones who want to learn. Inexperience is the easiest problem to deal with. Training and practice fix that. Make sure you identify those who are merely inexperienced rather than those who are incorrigible. I bring this up because as a healer.. you will be able to see your groupmates do some absolutely stupid BS that you normally don't see as a DPS or Tank. Like some absolute WTF moments.

And this will sound dumb, but it works. Make sure your costume/illusion makes you easy to identify. I had a buddy of mine running a healer with a skeleton illusion and complained that we got out of range of heals. Well no s----.. I see a skelly chasing me and I'm low on health.. its not going to end well. Yeah this really happened. Eventually one of the guys suggested telling him to change it. I haven't seen this suggested in a guide before.. but as a healer.. try to look the part. Don't look scary, or your DPS might flip out and run away from you in dire situations.

Good advice above so I won't repeat.

Watching the Enemy
I will say a big help with healing is watching the enemy/boss and learning their attacks. They usually have ~3 attacks that are important in battle, and almost all of these they use in a reliable sequence and are telegraphed (e.g. give visual clues they're going to use skill x,y or z before they actually use it). Once aware to look for them it doesn't take a long time to learn these and when you do, healing can be so much easier!

Proactive healing when you know a dangerous attack is coming to someone or similar, really can make the difference. What do I mean by that? For me as a templar healer that is mostly using the restoration staff skill Healing Springs (Or Illustrious Healing morph), it's a strong Ground Targeted short Area Of Effect skill (GTAoE). I use this skill and not breathe of life (it's either one or the other on my character's healing bar) depending upon the group. If the group works together, and keeps together; Healing Springs is wonderful. If they're jumping around like nutters, and all spread wildly over the place, well it's no more more Healing Springs and I sadly must use breath of Life. Don't get me wrong, Breath of Life is great too, it's a wonderful wonderful skill at times, and sometimes it is preferable for me. It's a personal thing. The important thing is you find what works best for you.

Equipment: Don't be afraid to use heavy armour
I'd recommend having a crafting set as your main armour, in Robe, Leggings, Boots, Gloves and Belt. In light armour, as was said above by others. It's really up to you what you want. Seducers is great, there are so many good healing sets you really can't go wrong. Now, I'd also recommend having a set of this in Heavy Armour You can switch to for tough battles; for me that's namely end bosses in some veteran dungeons. It takes a little getting use to, but the 'Rapid Mending' passive on heavy armour, can increase your heavy attacks to restore 15% of total magicka each completion. Now that can be a lot, and with a little heavy attacking in battle (a touch more than you would in light armour) you'll never run out of magicka, and just as important; be still standing when those ~20,000 damage hits come your way.

For my character I have three sets of healing armour I switch between: A Light and Heavy Set of "Twice-Born Star", and a "Healing Mage" Set. I swap as between as I like: as the group/dungeon/challenge sees fit.

Finally, I have a secondary set of Jewellery with the 'Healthy' Trait instead of 'Arcane'. Once again this is to switch out as needed for extra health. At the end of the day for me I've found the biggest factor limiting healing success is having my character stay on their feet. No matter how much they heal for, it's pointless when face down on the ground.

Ugh, numbers...
Just finally to give a couple of numbers to show that it's not the end of the world switching to heavy armour at times ( numbrs all unbuffed, excluding food), my Breath of Life tooltip goes from; 11,018 in all light armour (legendary quality) and arcane jewellery, to 10,094 in all healthy heavy armour (epic quality) and Healthy Jewellery. So roughly a 10% reduction in healing. But my character is much much stronger. Health going from; 17,381 to 25,634, And resistances from 17,842 & 12,661 to 22,478 & 19,112. For me that trade off is definitely worth it.

I hope that in some way helps.